Golf merger could see early divergence of EU and Trump-US regulation

A landmark tie-up between the world's largest golf competitions could prove an early test for different handling of merger control between the new regime of President-elect Donald Trump and the European Commission.

In June 2023, PGA Tour, the largest golf tour in the world, and LIV Golf, which entered the market in 2022 and is financed by Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF), announced an agreement to combine their assets through a new entity that will “unify the game of golf, on a global basis”.

At the time the announcement came as a surprise, since both professional golf tours had been battling, with 11 LIV Golf players challenging their suspensions by the PGA Tour for defecting to the Saudi-backed circuit with an antitrust suit. The agreement saw the rivals bury the hatchet with a plan to grow their “combined commercial businesses” and “drive greater fan engagement.”

Discussions remain ongoing and the parties need to find a formula for compensating the players who stayed loyal to the PGA, though an investment deal appears to be nearing completion.

If the parties get the deal over the line financially, the tie-up would come onto the radar of competition enforcers on both side of the Atlantic given the impact such a merger might have on the golf tour market.

“It would reduce an already concentrated space from being dominated by two firms to just one. And LIV Golf is known as a disruptive competitor,” Asfand Gulzar, a Senior Associate at Fieldfisher law firm, told Euronews, adding that “if the merger is confirmed, the European Commission [the EU antitrust enforcer] will look at the market power of the new entity, innovation being probably one of the key factors that it will look at.”

LIV Golf is known as a disruptive